Sooner or later, the Bruins will have to find a way to solve Carey Price.

On Sunday night, the league’s top goalie stonewalled the Bruins for a fourth time this season, stopping 34 of 35 shots in a 3-1 win over the Bruins that gave Montreal a clean sweep of the four-game season series. What does it mean to Price?

“That’s what they are. They’re a really good team, well-structured,” Price said. “They work hard. They’ve got all the characteristics of a good playoff team, and I don’t doubt that if we want to get to our ultimate goal, we’ll see them again.”

In those four games, Price has allowed just six goals, turning aside 113 of the 119 shots he’s faced. On Sunday, he admitted he was a little bit lucky to go along with being very good. The best example of that was in the second period when Loui Eriksson fired a shot on goal from the left circle after he left his crease. The puck hit his stick and popped straight up in the air and into his glove.

Then came his two saves in the same period on the tough-luck Daniel Paille. One was a kick save on Paille, who was right on the doorstep and took a pass from Torey Krug but could not finish. The other was a stick save on a shot from Paille from the right circle.

“Lucky. I don’t even think it was going in, to be honest,” Price said of the second Paille chance.

In the first period, Craig Cunningham had a chance in the low slot with Price again scrambling in the crease. But there was Michael Bournival there to get a piece of it before Price could get back in position.

“Absolutely, yeah. We had some guys bailing me out,” Price said. “That’s what it’s all about. We’re a committed team to blocking shots, and battling in that blue paint, and tonight it paid off in a close one.”

The flip side of this is alarming to the Bruins, especially coach Claude Julien.

“I don’t think we made Carey Price‘s night real hard,” Julien said. “He didn’t have to move much. He just stood there, stopped the shots, so those are areas that weren’t good enough, and in order to beat this team that really gets up for us our best players have to be our best players and we didn’t have that tonight.”

How do the Bruins go about making things tougher?

“Traffic,” captain Zdeno Chara said. “It’s pretty obvious I think. I don’t think there’s any goalie in the league that likes to have traffic in front of him. We didn’t do that probably consistently for the whole night.”

“Like every goalie you have to get in front,” added fellow blue liner Dennis Seidenberg. “If the goalie doesn’t see the puck he can’t stop them or he can’t make a save. There are going to loose pucks and we just have to get there in front of him and then get those second chance opportunities and that has been missing in the past.”

Dennis Seidenberg knew his hit on Jonathan Toews looked bad the moment it happened in the second period, as the Bruins were trying to kill off the final minute of consecutive penalties that put the Bruins in penalty kill mode.

But the strong, hulking defenseman made a point after the game that he meant no harm and certainly didn’t intend to put Toews out of of commission for the rest of the game. For the record, 49 seconds after getting hit by Seidenberg, Toews was actually on the ice, getting called for hooking Chris Kelly.

But after serving his hooking penalty, Toews went to the Chicago dressing room and did not return.

After the game, Seidenberg insisted he meant no harm toward Chicago’s star center.

“I pride myself on being a clean player and a hard player to play against, so when I went in on that one-on-one battle there, I thought I saw his right shoulder and at the last second he might have turned, I don’t know,” Seidenberg said. “I didn’t really see the replay or anything and obviously I never want to see a guy go into the boards like that.

“I would never want to hurt a guy,” he added. “That’s the last thing on my mind. I like playing hard and winning my board battles and that’s about it.”

David Pastrnak wasn’t about to complain about ice time or being mixed and matched with different lines. The 18-year-old was just happy to be making his NHL debut Monday night against Sidney Crosby and the Penguins.

The Czech played 10 shifts for a total of seven minutes, 53 seconds, with three missed shots, a hit, a takeaway and a giveaway in Boston’s 3-2 overtime loss to Pittsburgh.

The soft-spoken first-round pick reminded many of David Krejci afterward, speaking softly but admitting that he was indeed a little nervous getting the call up.

“A little bit for sure, but I said I just tried to play for the team and tried to do my best for the win and play my game,” Pastrnak said. “I think we played hard. We battled hard and tried to go to the net but it wasn’t enough. I tried to my best for the team and enjoy the time and enjoy the game.”

Coach Claude Julien mixed and matched Pastrnak on different lines Monday, taking advantage of the very fluid situation caused by the numerous injuries and limiting Brad Marchand, who was playing his first game back since coming off the injured reserve list.

When Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs expressed interest in buying the Buffalo Bills in April, after the passing of longtime owner Ralph Wilson, Bruins fans wondered if that meant the end of his stewardship of the NHL franchise.

Tuesday, during a 25-minute address to reporters at TD Garden, Jacobs made it clear that he has no such intentions and is quite happy as the owner of the “Original Six” franchise.

“Well, I can’t buy the Bills, because I own the Bruins,” Jacobs said, referring to the NFL by-laws that prohibit owning teams in different cities. “That’s not a bad place to be. I kind of like where I am.”

Jacobs is among the wealthiest and most successful businessmen in the world, owning the Delaware North Companies, with an individual net worth of approximately $3.1 billion. Jacobs was initially among a group of several Western New York businessmen reported to be interested in the Bills. Another businessman reportedly interested was real estate tycoon Donald Trump.

Jacobs has owned the Bruins since 1975. Jacobs also represents the club on the NHL‘s Board of Governors and serves on its Executive Committee. At the NHL Board of Governors meeting in June 2007, Jacobs was elected Chairman of the Board, replacing the Calgary Flames‘ Harley Hotchkiss.

Jacobs made changes in management of the Bruins, with the retirement of veteran team president Harry Sinden from active management of the team into an advisory capacity. New management included Peter Chiarelli and head coach Claude Julien. Cam Neely, who was on the dais Tuesday with Jacobs and Jacobs’ son Charlie, was also lured back to the new organization and subsequently named as President of the team.

Since 2008, the Bruins have made playoffs every year, winning the Stanley Cup in 2011, reaching the Cup finals in 2013 and winning the Presidents’ Trophy this past season as the team with the best record and most points (117).

Patrice Bergeron stood in front of his locker and searched for the words that never really came. How did the Bruins lay such an egg in Game 7 with their 54-win, 117-point season in the balance?

“You can’t really, there’s no words to explain it,” Bergeron said. “Obviously got to give them credit, but we didn’t execute and we didn’t score the goals that we needed to get the momentum or whatever.”

From the moment the Canadiens’ Dale Weise took a pass from Danny Briere and beat Tuukka Rask, with Matt Bartkowski looking on, the Bruins looked demoralized.

“That first goal definitely sucked the energy out of us and it was hard to get it back,” Bergeron said. “We had some shifts that we did, but again, all in all, when we had some good chances they scored that second goal again. And bottom line, we’ve got to execute and score. Like I just said, we’ve got to definitely give them some credit where they deserve it, but we’ve got to be better.

“I don’t know if it was nerves, I think we’ve been there before, but yeah, definitely not the start that we needed. And that goal definitely took that energy out of us.”

MONTREAL — Forget the fanned shot in the opening two minutes on a perfect feed from David Krejci. Forget the wide-open net he missed later in the first period. And forget Montreal’s Dale Weise mocking his physique by making a muscle with his right arm in front of the Canadiens bench.

What you should understand, according to Bruins first-line forward Milan Lucic, is that these Bruins haven’t panicked all season and they’re not about to start now.

In a 4-0 blanking Monday night in Game 6, the Canadiens used a little bit of Boston’s physical style of play to establish their own dominance, and now it’s up to the Bruins to return the favor Wednesday night if they hope to advance to the Eastern Conference finals.

“You hope that it does but you know it’s not going to be easy,” Lucic conceded. “You fought all season long to get home-ice advantage for situations like this and now you have to go out and get it.

“They obviously bared down on their chances and put it in the back of the net. We can’t dwell on anything going into a Game 7. This is, for guys that have been around her for a couple of years, this is the ninth one since 2008, so that’s all we’re looking forward to right now. We’re putting everything else behind us. We know one game and winner moves on.”

MONTREAL — From the moment he came out to play a bouncing puck from behind his net in the first period Monday night, Tuukka Rask and the Bruins were in a generous mood.

And that’s a terrible thing when you come into a game thinking you have your opponent down, right where you want them. But Torey Krug’s pass to Kevan Miller was mishandled and Rask failed to contain it and gift-giving was underway.

“I don’t know what happened behind the net,” Rask said after Montreal’s 4-0 win in Game 6. “All of sudden, it was right in front of me and out of the corner of my eye, I thought there was a guy on the left side so I just decided to jump on that and missed it and it wound up in the back of the net.”

The Bruins gave the Canandiens chance after chance in front of Rask, including a miscommunication between Rask and captain Zdeno Chara in the second period that resulted in a killer goal and a 2-0 Montreal lead.

“I kind of hesitated,” Rask said. “I didn’t want to get burned again as I did the first one. I got burned a different way. I think me and Zee got caught looking at each other. I thought he was going to dive and he thought I was going to play it. Just another gift.